San Diego 
City officials in San Diego and Baja California are drafting a plan for San Diego cops to train a bilingual, tourist-friendly police force that would work south of the border.

The idea, announced yesterday at San Diego City Hall, is to create a unit called the Metropolitan Police to patrol the tourist corridor between Tijuana and Ensenada and points farther south. Officers from the police departments of Tijuana, Rosarito Beach and Ensenada, and possibly the state police, would be trained in how to better interact with visitors.

The hope is to create a stronger sense of security for tourists, business visitors and others who travel to the region, officials said, and restore Baja California's battered tourist economy in the wake of drug violence that has caused many businesses dependent on visitors to close.

“If they come down here and see what is happening, they will change the perception they have,” said Hugo Torres, mayor of Rosarito Beach. The city already has a tourist police unit composed of close to 30 municipal officers.

Unlike the tourist police, the new unit will perform the bulk of its work along Baja's Highway 1, said Cesar Santiesteban, secretary of public safety for Ensenada. The training with San Diego police would enable the Mexican cops to learn “how American police think, how American police work,” Torres said.

A letter of intent to begin the program was signed by officials from both sides of the border yesterday, though there is nothing concrete as to what the program would cost, who would pay for it, how many dedicated officers there would be or what the training would entail. San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders said the plan will be developed over the next several weeks.

Sanders said it is in San Diego's best interest to get involved because many visitors to the region, along with convention planners and other travel promoters, see San Diego as a gateway to Baja California.

“What is good for Tijuana, Rosarito and Ensenada is good for San Diego,” Sanders said. “We share the same families, the same culture and the same business opportunities.”

The training will probably be more along the lines of enhancing cultural sensitivity to northerners than about police professionalization, said Jorge Eduardo Montero Alvarez, Rosarito's secretary of public safety.